It is not about your Style - An Investigation on Managerial Soft Skills and Attributes Related to Positive Leadership Styles in the Service Sector

Abstract

Purpose: Managerial work and leadership are linked to the organization of the work of others. Managers are responsible for planning and scheduling work, allocating resources and directly monitoring the work progress in many ways. Their work is fundamentally relational and affects the work engagement and the service quality of the team. Based on that, our purpose is to investigate common soft skills and attributes within positive leadership from well-performing workshop managers, providing an insight on these characteristics and skills in relation to a positive service quality. Theory: The theoretical framework is based on five different theories related to positive leadership and engagement: personal engagement-, self-determination-, social exchange-, social learning and job demands job resources theory. These theories and concepts enable the identification of the relevant soft skills of these leaders in a multinational organization. Method: The research was carried out through a qualitative method using semi-structured interviews. Interviews were conducted with workshop managers within the organization from five different countries in the business area “Europe North Central” and the interviews were then analyzed using thematic analysis. The number of respondents was 12. Result: The study revealed that most of the managers had one or more attributes from each leadership style, which is believed to be positively related to work engagement and service quality. In addition to that, soft skills like communication, ability to influence, self-awareness and sensibility for individual needs were expressed as important skills for most of the leaders, as well as their mechanical background.